Aotearoa: Early history

When Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642, he called the place Staten Land in the belief it was somehow connected to an Isla de los Estados (Staten Island) in what is now modern Argentina.

Subsequently, Joan Blaeu, official Dutch cartographer to the Dutch East India Company, conferred the name Nieuw Zeeland (Nova Zeelandia in Latin) on the land Tasman had discovered. Zeeland was one of two maritime provinces in the Netherlands; Australia was already known to the Dutch as New Holland. Nieuw Zeeland stuck.

When James Cook arrived in 1769, Nieuw Zeeland was anglicised to New Zealand, as can be seen in his famous 1770 map. He did, however, attempt to retain Māori names for both main islands: his map records “Eaheinomauwe” (possibly He-mea-hī-nō-Māui, or the things Māui fished up) for the North Island and “T Avai Poonamoo” (Te Wai Pounamu, or greenstone waters) for the South Island.

The first reference in legislation to New Zealand was in the Murders Abroad Act of 1817, passed by parliament in England in response to increasing lawlessness in the South Pacific – including the maltreatment of indigenous sailors aboard European ships.

Māori do not appear to have had a name for what is now called New Zealand.  Their society was tribal-based and they had no concept of a country or state.  The North Island was Te Ika a Maui – the fish of Maui – and the South Island Tewaipounamu, or the rivers of greenstone.  The latter also had other names in legend, including Te waka a Maui, or Maui’s canoe, from which he hauled up his great fish.

Nu Tirene appears (various spellings)

The Māori Declaration of Independence of 1835 which asserted the authority of the ‘Independent Tribes of New Zealand’ has both Māori and English versions.  The Māori version of New Zealand is Nu Tereni, a Māori pronunciation of the English name.  Aotearoa is not used.

The English version of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi has several references to the ‘Tribes of New Zealand’, ‘Chiefs of New Zealand’, ‘Natives of New Zealand’.  The Māori version translates New Zealand as Nu Tirani.

William Williams’ Māori dictionary, first published in 1844, has no entry for Aotearoa.

By 1835, a number of iwi (tribes) engaged in international trade and politics were using the name “Nu Tireni” to describe New Zealand in their correspondence with Britain.

The Māori Legal Corpus, a digitised collection of thousands of pages of legal texts in te reo Māori spanning 1829 to 2009, contains around 4,800 references to Nu Tirene, Niu Tirani and Niu Tirene.

The translation into te reo Māori of the Maori Language Act 1987 refers to Niu Tireni, as does the Māori Language Act 2016.

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